How we review online casinos

The five criteria

1. Bonus value and honesty. Not the headline percentage: the wagering requirement, the game weighting, the max-bet rule and whether the terms are findable without hunting.
2. Catalogue depth. How many independent studios feed the lobby, not how many titles are advertised.
3. Live dealer. Table variety, studio spread, limits, and how many clicks it takes to reach a seat.
4. Payments. Methods in and out, verification friction, and what realistically holds a withdrawal.
5. Clarity. Whether the site tells a player the truth about bonuses and cashouts before they deposit rather than after.

Commercial disclosure

CX Casino Guide is free to read and funded by commercial links to operators. That relationship pays for the site; it doesn’t buy a rating, a ranking or silence about a drawback. Every review on this site lists what to watch alongside what works, and the ordering on the home page follows the scoring above. If an operator wanted a review without criticism, they would need to buy an advert somewhere else.

What we don’t do

• We do not accept payment for a position in a ranking.
• We don’t publish a rating we cannot justify against the five criteria.
• We don’t present bonus figures without the wagering context that makes them meaningful.
• We do not target anyone under 18, and we don’t present gambling as a way to make money.

Corrections

Bonus terms, codes and catalogues change constantly. If something on this site is out of date or wrong, the operator’s own page is the authority — and we would rather fix it than leave it. Pages carry a last-updated date in the footer.

How a review is put together

Each review starts from the operator’s own current offer and terms, which is where the bonus percentage, the code and any wagering conditions come from. We then go through the lobby the way a new player would: provider filter first, to see how many independent studios actually supply the catalogue; then the live section, to see how far a table is from the front page and what limits are on offer; then the cashier, to see which methods are available in and out and what verification is asked for. What we find goes into the review, including the parts that don’t flatter the operator.

The five reviews are written separately rather than filled into a template, because the sites are not alike. A slots-led lobby, a live-first front page and a casino that shares its wallet with a sportsbook raise different questions, and each review is organised around the questions its site actually raises.

What would make us drop an operator

• Terms that contradict what the site advertises, left uncorrected.
• Withdrawals held for reasons that appear nowhere in the terms.
• Bonus conditions that cannot be found before a deposit is made.

Any of those would outweigh a commercial relationship, and the review would say why.

Who this site is for

Players comparing operators, and, on the aggregation page — operators comparing suppliers. Both halves of the same industry, written for people who want the mechanics rather than the marketing.